The Devil

XV – The Devil, like Death, can be very misunderstood in the cards. When the Devil shows up, people will often cringe but here again, he is not such a bad guy. He is what I refer to as a necessary evil in life. The Devil is said to come from the god Pan. Pan is again often misunderstood. The Devil often represents those things in life that we feel will be a short cut somehow, or something that will make things easier for us in life. I equate things like jobs, those work-a-day varieties that we do for the money.

Substance abuse issues can also be spotted with this card. The Devil is about all those things that we do in life in order to make life easier and in some cases this will be things like drugs or alcohol. There are those who take drugs because of necessity, and then there are those who take drugs or drink in order to make life more agreeable. In the beginning, no harm no foul, but ultimately drugs and alcohol have a way of taking over our life. Well, so does a job that we are doing only for the money sucks us dry in life. We sometimes do not recognize what we do to ourselves when we go after material wealth to the point that it takes our life away.

Right side up, you can be sure that there is some lesson about something in your life that you are using to make life better, but the trouble is that whatever it is has now become more trouble then it is worth. This can be anything from a relationship, because relationships are also addictive, to substance abuse or a job. We think it makes things easier, it seems to be the path of least resistance, and in some ways it is. That it the lesson, we are not here to find easy ways out but to strive through the process, take the pain with the effort. In the case of a job, we often don’t give ourselves credit enough to believe that we can follow our heart and still make money, or we have ourselves into debt so bad that we are forced to work at something that is draining us and keeping us from having and living a balanced life.

In the reverse, this card can indicate the opposite, of being on the right track and doing the right things. The fact that it is not about the power or the money, it is only about doing what is believed to be the right thing. This is a card of doing the right things for the right reasons.

In meditation this might be a good card to look at when you need to look at something that might be draining your life, whether it is a person, a job or a drug. It may be good for an individual to also be more aware of those necessary evils in life, such as we all need to work. To understand that being here in the earth plane also makes us aware of material concepts and here to we find our friend Pan or as we know him in the cards The Devil.